This season brings Signature Theatre to its tenth anniversary and will
also see its founding Artistic Director, Eric Schaeffer, make both his
Broadway and West End directorial debuts. Sweeney Todd is the perfect
vehicle for celebrating both. As Sweeney was the first musical produced
by Signature, this new production affords an opportunity for reflection
on past achievements -- Signature's development into a preëminent
Sondheim showplace -- but even more so for an assessment of the craft that
has catapulted Schaeffer into the musical theater fast lane..

The bottom line: Schaeffer is thoughtful, masterful and simultaneously
focused on high concept and the lowliest detail. My frame of reference
is the Harold Prince-directed original Sweeney: enormous, ambitious
and innovative. It was a heady time in which America's greatest then-functioning
musical theater writer and his directing counterpart were trying to marry
the traditions of musical theater and opera. (No one would ever get as
close to succeeding as Sweeney; the euro-efforts that followed swerved
sharply away from the musical theater legacy.) Schaeffer jettisons any
pretense and, working in one-third as many cubic feet of performing space
as Prince -- I'm guessing here -- successfully delivers a version that
never lumbers under the considerable weight of the original and yet is
every bit as viscerally potent. Without sacrificing any of the shows complexity,
Schaeffer finds a way to stage it gracefully. And even more explicitly
gruesome than ever. Yummy.

There's no getting around the sordid facts. Sweeney Todd, then a barber
named Benjamin Barker (Norm Lewis), was wrongly sent to prison by the evil
Judge Turpin (Lawrence Redmond, in a performance of unequaled intensity
and sophistication). The sentence fit well into the designs Turpin had
on Barker's lovely wife, Lucy. As the show opens, still-pissed-off
Sweeney returns to London in the company of a young sailor, Anthony (Chad
Kimball), and is determined to search for his wife and their daughter,
Johanna (Jennifer Royall). Quickly meeting a widow, Mrs. Lovett (Donna
Migliaccio), who sells meat pies -- "The Worst Pies in London" -- he learns
that Lucy poisoned herself and that Turpin has taken Johanna as his ward
and "soon-to-be wife" (irresistibly mixing Sondheim references).

Before you know it, Mrs. Lovett, who quickly figures out the Todd/Barker
connection, presents Sweeney with his old, prized razor, which she has
been storing, and sets him up in business over her pie shop. "Bright ideas
keep popping in [her] head," and soon they have established a vertically
integrated conglomerate: he slits the throats of patrons upstairs; the
dead bodies become the emat supply in her bake shop below.

With ample fillings for her pies, business is booming and, but for the
rants of a "half-crazed" Beggar Woman (Dana Krueger), life is good. Todd
and Lovett have even become surrogate parents to a slow but sweet young
man, Tobias (Michael Sharp), who became homeless when his employer, Pirelli
(John J. Kaczynski), a competing barber, had to be, uh, liquidated by Sweeney.
Meanwhile, Anthony has fallen in love with Johanna, and a cat-and-mouse
game ensues in anticipation of their elopement. Not much more of the story
needs to be told here, except perhaps to note that, with the possible exception
of Macbeth, English-speaking theater has never seen as many dead
bodies on a stage.

Not to take anything away from Schaeffer's brilliant vision, but I'm
not sure he could have pulled it off without Donna Migliaccio (who
is reprising her role from the earlier Signature production). To say that
I was skeptical anyone could fill Angela Lansbury's shoes as Mrs. Lovett
(and I saw Dorothy Loudon try) is an understatement. And yet, Migliaccio
finds her own voice (and what a voice!) and portrays a wonderful, funny,
manipulative Mrs. Lovett that is all her own. Norm Lewis gives us a Sweeney
that is a surprise, painstakingly acted and more cerebral than ever before.
The more internalized emotions of this Sweeney -- punctuated by outbursts
of pure hostility which Schaeffer, quite literally, has directed into the
faces of the audience -- are a revelation. But there is something wrong,
or at least there was on opening night. Lewis, who normally has plenty
of lung to fill the Signature space, sang with a restrained if not impaired
voice. I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter,
because if a conscious decision, it was a poor one. He was vastly overpowered
not only by the orchestra but also by his singing partners, most especially
the superb Migliaccio.

The remainder of the cast is, on balance, excellent, although not without
exception. The young lovers have terrific voices. But while Kimball seems
perfectly cast, Royall is all-wrong -- a case of blind, voice - driven
casting that opera audiences are used to but that musical theater-goers
simply won't countenance. And while Redmond was, as noted above, exceptional
as Judge Turpin, his Beadle (Jimmy Smagula) was not particularly memorable.
Michael Sharp's Tobias, although not rising to the exquisite level of Ken
Jennings, was quite satisfying but Dana Krueger's Beggar Woman was pedestrian
and disappointing. Best of all, perhaps, was the ensemble, which is called
upon not only to portray a variety of small roles -- almost all of the
men's throats become targets of Sweeney's razor -- but also to function
as the Greek chorus Sondheim has employed to chilling effect. One of the
triumphs of Schaeffer's direction is the care with which he has given each
member individuality and an opportunity to show off their often-striking
voices.

The supporting elements of this production are in all cases top-notch.
Lou Stancari's set is a sooty maze of rooms shoehorned from three or more
levels into virtually a plane but somehow, miraculously, always making
sense. This unit set Sweeney exploits the parameters of the Signature
"black box&quot to the nth degree, giving the sense at times that the
audience is in a hovercraft piloted by Stancari and Schaeffer, which gently
touches down when they are ready to proceed. Lighting is dramatic and effective;
and costumes are rich in detail and extensive in scope. Jon Kalbfleisch
conducts the fine-sounding orchestra with great range, affording the score
all of the warmth, and chill, serenity and bombast, it requires.

Bravo. Go. See. But first, Hurry. These tickets are going to be hard
to come by.